


Beating Fire

by motsiparul



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Rewrite, F/M, Sun Warrior Zuko, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28217301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motsiparul/pseuds/motsiparul
Summary: Katara has known fire all her life.The Southern Water Tribe has always used it to get warm and to light the long winters, so Katara used to associate fire to family and to the sweet pleasure of listening to traditional tales.As time passes, fire isn’t only something that provides warmth and light, but also something that burns and destroys.Her Tribe is visited by fire-wielding men time and time again, and they bring destruction and death every time they visit.(In their journey all around the world, fire follows them, and it seems alive.)
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 65





	Beating Fire

**Author's Note:**

> I read a poem and this sprang into life. Hope you like it!

> These are the hours of rapid suns,  
>  and now men of long manes,  
>  above the wind’s stairs, ride dream horses.
> 
> They rise to kindled fires,  
>  move the red smoke and the crimson shadows  
>  and push the fire’s reflections.  
>  They arrive in the fire-beating nights,  
>  run through burnt diamonds, sand, ash.  
>  Through paradise’s blazing waves,  
>  they fly above the sharp flames.
> 
> Winged men of long manes fight  
>  with the wind and the light’s sword.
> 
> \-- Translation of "Ardent hymn", by Bartomeu Rosselló-Pòrcel

Katara has known fire all her life.

The Southern Water Tribe has always used it to get warm and to light the long winters, so Katara used to associate fire to family and to the sweet pleasure of listening to traditional tales.

As time passes, fire isn’t only something that provides warmth and light, but also something that burns and destroys.

Her Tribe is visited by fire-wielding men time and time again, and they bring destruction and death every time they visit. Her mother dies because of fire, and the smell of burnt meat and sour ashes engulfs their home for weeks.

Truly, in a small place inside her heart, she knows that she shouldn’t hate fire, but rather the people that use it to do harm.

But, inevitably, for her fire is destruction and death, and Katara grows an aversion for it.

\--

Years pass, she grows, Sokka and she find Aang and the three of them travel all around the world towards the Northern Water Tribe, in search of a waterbending teacher.

They have a lot of adventures, and Katara learns the hard way what the war has done, how everybody has lost so much, all around the world.

She feels small in all the of suffering the world, so when Katara loses her mother’s necklace one day, she tries to remember that everybody around them loses things every day, and doesn’t let herself mourn for it.

Fire then is, at least at first, just one more of Aang’s subjects of study, one that seems to be so far away. However, in one occasion, they meet a firebender master, Jeong Jeong, and Aang tries firebending for the first time. By accident, he burns her.

It hurts a lot, it’s a stinging pain Katara can’t comprehend. She hisses and wonders how something that doesn’t even have a body can cause so much pain.

Then she discovers the healing properties in her waterbending powers and thinks she can understand her aversion for fire a little bit more.

She reasons that it was only natural. Her homeland is a piece of ice, her element is water. And water is the opposite of fire. It heals, instead of destroying.

It must be that her hate for fire is inside her.

\--

There’s something that follows them.

There’s General Zhao, of course, who’s been trying to capture them since nearly the beginning of their trip.

But there’s something else.

Looking back, they realize it’s been there with them almost since they left the Southern Water Tribe, but they don’t become aware of it until they’re halfway on their trip to the North Pole.

Sometimes they feel something’s watching, overseeing their every movement, although nothing ever approaches them. At first, they all believe they’re paranoid, that they’re going crazy, but the three of them sense it, so they kind of accept there must be something else there with them.

They don’t know what it is, just that it appears intermittently. At night, when they are having dinner. During the day, when they are in some Earth Kingdom village. When they notice it, they call out for it, or they try to find it in the forest, but it’s all to no avail.

This mysterious entity doesn’t harm them, though, and Aang says he can sense it’s a friend.

After some time, they reason it’s not something, but somebody, and they speculate whether it is a spirit, a ghost or just a regular person.

At first, Katara is suspicious. However, it feels that, when this something is near them, General Zhao doesn’t attack them. Almost like a guardian spirit. So Katara starts to sleep better when it is near.

\--

It’s not until they have nearly arrived at the Northern Water Tribe that this being shows itself. They are in a village at the north of the Earth Kingdom when General Zhao attacks them by surprise.

They have fought Zhao before and they have won. But this time he has even more soldiers than usual.

They are trapped in a small alley, when Katara feels that that something is near. Sokka and Aang notice it too, because they all look at one another in wonder.

The air suddenly feels hot and Katara winces. There’s fire near.

A wall of flames appears behind Zhao’s soldiers. Katara has never seen so much fire together before and, at first, it scares her. But then her fear changes into curiosity.

For all the power the fire seems to have, it’s totally silent.

It moves differently than the soldiers’ fire too. Where theirs is tense and taut, this one is fluid and relaxed.

Katara looks on at it spellbound and, for a moment, she forgets where she is and the situation around her.

She is taken out of her trance by screams.

“It’s a ghost!” Zhao yells and all the soldiers flee in horror.

It’s then that Katara notices the person on top of the fire wall. They ride the fire as if it was their mount, steering it into the direction they want.

Katara remembers the hunters of her Tribe, who used to domesticate some animals so they helped them to hunt. She remembers the stories they told about the troubles taming big animals brought. You can never be too cautious. Even when you think it’s under your control, the animal could betray and kill you in any moment.

Trying to reign a fire like this one must be comparable to taming a wild animal.

This person doesn’t seem to have difficulties, though. The fire follows their indications and what could seem a fight between the rider and the fire feels like a placid dance.

It’s the first time in a long time that Katara can admit, although only to herself, that fire is beautiful.

From their place up in the air, the person floods Zhao’s forces in a swift motion.

Only when they are alone, Aang, Sokka, Katara and their saviour, the Fire Nation soldiers gone and the village deserted because of the fight, does the fire dissipate.

It is gone like it has appeared, fast and without a hint it was even there.

The fire comes down and, with it, its wielder.

At last, they can see from up close the person that’s been following them all this time. The person who has been their guardian.

Their breaths hitch.

It’s just a boy, and he can’t be much older than her brother.

He has incredibly long black hair, pale skin and bright red clothes. As he gets off his fire, Katara observes how the red light of the fire makes his skin glow.

There are a lot of things about the boy that surprise Katara, but the scar on one of his eyes isn’t one of them. Even people with such proficiency in firebending ought to have burns.

When it’s just them and the boy, Aang tries to stop him, asks him to tell them his name and his intentions. But he pays no attention to them and leaves.

He only leaves behind the scent of sweet ashes.

And Katara’s necklace, lost so many weeks ago, placed with care on the floor.

\--

They arrive to the Northern Water Tribe, where she and Aang learn waterbending. They fight against the Fire Nation and then they have to leave.

General Zhao disappears and Princess Azula appears.

Toph joins them.

They travel through the Earth Kingdom, and mostly they are alone. Sometimes, only sometimes, they can feel, just like they had at the start of their journey, that someone is following them. But it feels distant and even Toph, who can always see things nobody else sees, can’t know where is that person, that boy.

Sometimes Katara smells of sweet ashes, but, apart from that, he doesn’t appear again.

\--

Katara starts dreaming.

At first she only dreams of fire, of that fire. It appears in her dreams out of nowhere, with all its heat and all its colours. It looks dangerous, Katara knows it’s dangerous, but when she wakes up, her heart beating fast and her breathing ragged, it’s not because of fear.

The boy starts appearing after some time too. He bends the fire with ease and his moves are familiar. His hair is long, like the day they saw him, and his skin is alight with the colours of the fire. His expression is severe, his dissimilar eyes pierce through her and Katara hasn’t heard him talk, so she doesn’t dream his voice.

Oftentimes she doesn’t remember the dreams at all, just the essence of them, the certainty that she has dreamed them, has dreamed him.

She keeps on waking up, her heart still beating fast and her breathing ragged, and she feels dizzy and a little bit delirious, but, again, it’s not because of fear.

\--

They go to Ba Sing Se. Katara sees many refugees and a lot of them have burn scars, some eerily similar to the boy’s.

All the suffering around her makes it feel like she’s just being reaffirmed: the suffering of everybody in this world is tied to fire. If people didn’t bend fire, this wouldn’t happen. If the Fire Nation didn’t exist, the world would be in peace.

Something in the back of her head tells her fire is not to blame for the war, and sometimes she remembers the boy’s fire, dangerous but so beautiful, but Katara doesn’t accept it. She can’t accept it.

\--

In the Crystal Catacombs there is a boy.

Katara recognizes him right away. His hair is shorter and his clothes aren’t bright red anymore. But he’s that boy that’s been following them around, that boy who helped them once.

They hadn’t sensed him since they had arrived at Ba Sing Se and Katara understands now that he’s been around all the time, he’s just gotten better at not being noticed.

This time, his skin isn’t bright from fire, but instead from the green glow of the catacombs. Of course, he still has that scar around his eye.

“Who are you? Why have you been following us?” She asks, accusing.

The boy doesn’t answer.

“Why did you return me my necklace?” She says after some time. She still wonders if he stole it or if he just found it and gave it back to her. Either way, he returned it, and for that, Katara is grateful.

“It seemed important to you,” he says at last. His voice is raspy but soft and Katara realises once again how young he is.

“Thank you.” She finds she can’t be angry at him anymore. “It was my mother’s. It’s the only thing I have left of her.”

To this, he doesn’t say anything, but he does look at her intently.

It’s some time before she asks again.

“Why have you been following us?”

“It is my duty,” he says.

Katara needs to be suspicious, and so her interrogation continues.

“Who ordered you to do it?” She says, and takes a step forward.

He looks at her quizzically.

“Nobody, I decided it myself.”

“Why?” Katara asks again, eager. And hopeful too. She wants him to tell her he wants to help them, that he’s on their side.

However, the boy doubts. He looks at her and she can feel him thinking, calculating what he should tell her.

Katara turns around.

Anger rises inside her and hostility starts to flow through her veins. She chastises herself. Something inside her wanted to feel hopeful, wanted to be proven wrong. But, of course, she’s right.

After all, this boy is a firebender and his intentions could never be good.

After some time, she feels the boy taking a step towards her.

“I can -,” she hears him start, but a loud bang echoes through the Crystal Catacombs and Aang appears.

\--

They don’t talk anymore, but the boy helps them with Azula and the Dai Li.

Katara can swear the Princess is surprised for a fraction of a second when she sees him and Katara remembers Zhao and his men’s horrified expressions at seeing him months ago.

The two firebenders fight, and it feels like a dance. The deep red of his fire clashes with Azula’s blue, and if Katara weren’t fighting with several Dai Li at the moment, she would be mesmerized by it.

The firebenders’ combat is totally silent, but Katara can feel a strange throbbing around her, a pulsation that reverberates through the catacombs, and she realises it’s coming from the fire. She wonders if this beating is an echo of the firebenders’ hearts, or if it’s the fires’, monsters that have grown a heart of their own.

When Katara leaves, Aang unconscious in her arms, leaving the boy behind, the last thing she sees of him is his fire.

Katara heals Aang and they escape with everybody else. She looks below at the fallen city of Ba Sing Se and, when she closes her eyes, his fire is still engraved inside her eyelids.

\--

Time passes and they prepare for the Day of Black Sun. It ends up being a failure, and Katara and her friends find shelter in the Western Air Temple.

The boy appears again.

This time he doesn’t doubt when he offers to teach Aang firebending. Aang is ecstatic, Toph and Sokka are welcoming, but Katara is distrustful.

They know almost nothing about him, not even his name. The only thing they know is he is a firebender.

And what Katara knows is that fire is bad, and firebenders are bad, so he must be bad.

“He has helped us before, Katara!” Aang argues.

“He stayed behind fighting Azula in Ba Sing Se!” Katara shouts. “How did he escape and come here?”

“I escaped the Fire Nation prison I was in,” he explains. But he doesn’t say anything else.

They don’t even know his name.

\--

“Fire is life.”

He says it constantly, nearly like a mantra, when he teaches Aang.

And, for a moment, Katara almost believes it. She sees it in the way he bends the element, the moves somewhat different to the usual firebending moves, but so familiar to Katara at the same time. She sees it in the calmness in his voice and the softness of his eyes. She sees it in his fire too, and it almost makes Katara remember the fires from her childhood, all warmth and family.

But she can’t believe it. Not when fire has hurt her so many times, when so many Fire Nation people have brought so much pain and suffering in her life.

It’s even etched on his skin, fire is dangerous and fire is bad.

How can he say fire is life when he has that scar on his face?

\--

Katara is usually the one who cooks. The first thing she does is prepare water to boil it. She bends water to a pot and she takes out her two spark rocks to light a fire. It comes automatic to her.

But ever since he joined them, she hasn’t needed spark rocks anymore. He is always there, and lights the fire himself.

\--

One day, they all visit a Fire Nation village. They are meant to be there for a few hours to buy some things, but instead they return a few days later, having solved a case of disappearances. And now Katara knows bloodbending.

Aang is comforting, assures her she’s still a good person.

But he, that boy, tells her there can be good uses for it, that no form of bending is inherently bad.

It’s night already, and the wind wipes at their faces. And Katara gets angry, because how can he say such a thing?

Who is he to tell her that?

What’s more, who even is he?

He’s been with them for a few weeks, and he has ingrained himself inside her skin, and the smell of him is everywhere around them, and Katara still dreams of him constantly, but she doesn’t even know what’s his name.

And she yells at him all that, or at least the parts she can say out loud.

“I used to be Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation,” he says, and then explains his origin.

He explains how he was the oldest child of the Fire Lord, how he was sent into exile by his own father to capture the Avatar and how he disappeared after that.

He explains with a strange softness in his eyes how his uncle brought him to a secret place, and how he learnt a different type of firebending from them. How he spent three years with them and when the news arrived that the Avatar had appeared, he found in himself that he didn’t want to fulfil the mission he’d been ordered by his father anymore.

He explains he’d found his destiny in those three long years, and it was to help the Avatar win the Fire Lord and end the war.

Katara listens as he tells her, nearly whispering, how everyone had started believing he was dead in those three years. And he explains how, in some way, Zuko died and he was born.

“If you’re not Zuko anymore, how can I call you?” Katara whispers when he’s finished.

He smiles.

“I’m a different person, but my name’s still Zuko.”

Katara nods, and then reflects upon all he’s told her.

His past is surprising, something she would have never guessed. At the same time, though, this new information fills up perfectly the gaps she had of him inside her and, when she looks at him again, he appears whole.

Among all the new information, something strikes.

A form of firebending that has given him life. A form of firebending so different but so familiar to Katara at the same time. A form of firebending so unique that, when Katara watches him use it, it makes her feel a tingling on the tips of her fingers and in the inside of her stomach.

A form of firebending that teaches that fire is life.

“What is this form of firebending?” Katara wants to know.

Suddenly she finds she craves to know about a form of firebending that isn’t the one she has known all her life. A form of firebending that brings life, just like what she does when she heals with her water.

It’s maybe an excuse; she just wants an excuse to let herself, who is so full of hate for fire, get to love his fire.

“They are called the Sun Warriors.”

\--

Zuko doesn’t tell her anything about the Sun Warriors and their form of firebending – “secrecy is required,” he tells her – but Katara thinks.

Fire is death, she wants to say. She hasn’t known this all her life, but it has ingrained itself into her so tight that it feels like it has always been a truth for her. But fire is life in the hearths of her homeland, and now fire is life in Zuko’s hands.

Water is life, she wants to say too, because she has known this all her life. But she remembers what she can do to the plants around her, and what she is able to do during a full moon. Now water can be death in her hands.

\--

They talk a lot when they do chores together, mostly keeping it casual.

Zuko smiles when he tells her about life in the Fire Nation, and about good moments with his uncle and disappeared mother.

Katara tells him about her childhood in the Southern Water Tribe, and about Gran Gran and her father. She wishes she was able to talk about her mother like he does. She wants to remember her kind smile and explain the things she taught her.

But more often than not, when she thinks of her, the only things that come to her mind are the reds of a soldier’s uniform, the brightness of a sizzling fire, and the burning smell of a broken home.

\--

There isn’t a strange fire and a mysterious boy in her dreams anymore. There is Zuko.

When she wakes up, there isn’t a timid and suspicious boy anymore. There is Zuko.

Katara loves how his name sounds in her mouth. When she calls for him, it feels like water is flowing through her tongue just like water flows through her skin when she bends.

She asks herself why a name from the Fire Nation feels so much like water.

She loves saying his name aloud and she loves how he smiles when he hears her calling out for him.

\--

One day, Sokka and Zuko disappear and they return some days later with Suki, a prisoner and her father.

Katara is very happy they have been reunited, but some days later Princess Azula turns up at the Western Air Temple, so they have to separate again.

They camp in a beautiful place, and the stars are easier to watch there than in the Western Air Temple. But her father is not with them.

The war has separated them, yet again.

“Aren’t you tired?” Katara asks him one night. The Moon is up in the sky and almost everyone has gone to sleep.

Zuko is still near the warm fire, looking up, and the fire makes his skin glow.

He shakes his head and continues looking up, at the Moon.

“I thought firebenders felt better when the Sun was out,” Katara says. She is joking, but Zuko tears his gaze away from the Moon.

“The Sun Warriors told me the Sun is actually the one that lights the Moon during the night. So, in a way, the Sun is still out,” he says. It’s the first time he has told her anything about his teachers and, for that, Katara is grateful.

Still, she feels a sickness growing in her stomach.

“That can’t be,” she says, offended. “The Moon doesn’t need the Sun.”

“Of course not. But we do need the Sun to see the Moon,” Zuko says, and he smiles gently at her.

That can’t be, Katara repeats in her mind. The more Moon she sees, and the more Moon there is in the sky, the more powerful she feels. How can Zuko tell her that she can only use all the power of the Moon when the Sun lets her see the Moon? The Sun, that thing that’s made of just fire?

“They told you that because they want you to believe fire is the superior element,” she spits out.

Zuko’s eyes grow alarmed.

“That’s not what I meant,” he starts, but Katara doesn’t let him finish.

“The Sun doesn’t have anything to do with water. And I’m sure all that ‘fire-is-life’ is nonsense too. Fire can only kill,” she says, and then leaves.

\--

Katara is still angry when she wakes up the next morning. She is inside her tent, and its fabric is thick enough to protect her from the cold in the winter, but today it’s summer and the Sun rays easily pierce through the fabric and land on her.

Something in the back of her mind tells her that she is in the wrong. Katara doesn’t want to pay attention to it.

When she exits her tent, Zuko is there. It is obvious he hasn’t slept one bit – he looks very tired.

“You look terrible,” she says instead.

“I waited out here all night.”

“What do you want?”

Zuko is solemn when he talks. “I know who killed your mother, and I’m going to help you find him.”

Katara’s heart stops for a moment.

\--

It’s night and the wind whips at them as they fly on Appa.

“Why are you doing this?” Katara asks.

“It seemed important to you,” he says, and Katara feels brought back to the Crystal Catacombs.

\--

They meet Yon Rha and Katara faces him.

When she’s done, Zuko doesn’t bring them back to the camp. Instead he takes her to Ember Island, to his family’s beach house.

It’s night when they arrive, and the Moon is up in the sky. Katara stops by the beach and looks at it.

The moonlight settles on her, and she can feel herself more powerful already.

“Does the Sun really light the Moon?”

Zuko stops next to her and nods.

“Thanks to the Moon, the Sun can bring its light to us in the night,” he explains.

Katara mulls over his words.

Fire and water are opposites. One heats, the other cools. One burns, the other heals. One lights, the other drowns. But it had not occurred to Katara that their sources of power could be so interconnected.

The Sun helps the Moon be seen during the night. The Moon helps the Sun light the night.

The Sun illuminates the Moon during the night so waterbenders can extract more power from it. The Moon is the screen that allows the Sun to give its power to firebenders during the night.

“I think I understand now what you said the other day,” Katara finally says.

The moonlight – the sunlight – lands on them as they stand there, the sea waves crashing on the shore.

\--

They all start living in Ember Island. They sleep in comfortable beds, but they continue to eat outside, in the house’s courtyard.

It’s night, and Katara can’t find the Moon in the sky, but, strangely, the bonfire in front of her is enough. It reminds Katara of a simple life in the Southern Water Tribe.

Most of the others have gone to sleep. Zuko is still there, still awake, just next to her. Their arms brush occasionally and Katara doesn’t know why, but she wants to reach out and grab his hand.

His skin glows under the firelight and that makes Katara remember their early days.

The time he helped them with General Zhao, or the time in the Catacombs.

The first time she saw Zuko, his skin glowed just like now. He seemed to be a horseman, his fire his mount, riding through the sky.

The second time, in the Catacombs, his skin glowed too, and his fire beat like a weird creature.

In both occasions, she had been enthralled by him and his fire, so strange yet so familiar, a fire that burned but pumped at the same time, like it was a heart. Like it was alive.

Katara side-eyes the boy next to her. He’s looking at the fire pensively, his scarred side facing her. There’s a question that has plagued her mind for some time.

“Can I ask you something?” Katara says, her eyes on the fire in front of them but her attention on the boy beside her.

Zuko removes his gaze from the fire and looks at her. “Sure.”

“How did you get your scar?”

He freezes, doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and Katara’s heart starts beating fast. She always thought it was a training accident, a memoir of a time in which he wasn’t capable of taming his own fire, but the look in his face tells her otherwise. She doesn’t have time to add anything else before he starts his account.

When he starts talking about the time before his banishment, Katara’s heart stops.

It turns out his father is the one who did it. His own father.

Something visceral seeps through Katara. She feels nothing but hate for a man capable to not only exile but also burn his own son.

She doesn’t believe words can help at all, but she feels the need to say something nevertheless, “You didn’t deserve that. Nobody does.”

Zuko doesn’t answer, just closes his eyes. Katara isn’t thinking much when she lifts her hand and caresses his scar. Zuko tenses at the touch, but after some moments she can feel him leaning on her hand.

\--

It becomes a habit for Katara and Zuko to keep each other company well into the night. Even if days are long and tiring because of Aang’s training, when the night comes, Katara feels restless and is unable to fall asleep.

Katara wonders if Zuko can’t sleep either or if he’s just keeping her company.

Usually, they sit in front of a fire and look at the stars.

Sometimes they go the beach and Katara practices waterbending while Zuko watches.

And, in some occasions, he joins her and they spar.

Katara loves sparring with Zuko and wishes they’d do it more often. It’s exciting, it’s challenging and Katara feels like she’s properly honing her skills.

They both give it their all, solely concentrated on the other, and Katara feels something stirring inside her when Zuko’s eyes never leave her.

Every time they fight, his fire is the usual red. Every time they fight, his fire has an incessant untamed wildness, and it pulses like it did that day in the Crystal Catacombs. Katara finds it exhilarating every time like it was the first.

They lay down on the sand one night after one of their sparring sessions. Both are panting. Although her body is exhausted, her mind is sharp, and Katara finds that she loves the contradiction.

The sand below them is still warm from the hot day, waves crash on the shore in a rhythmic cadence, the Moon is beaming at them and Katara is happy.

“We should stop doing these next to the sea, you are clearly at an advantage here,” Zuko says, still grasping for air. “We should try it during the day too,” he adds.

Katara laughs, and her heart flutters at the prospect of more fighting with Zuko.

She’s still high on the excitement of the battle and doesn’t think much when she says, “Have I ever told you I like your fire?”

Zuko turns his head and looks at her. His eyes are alight. “No, you haven’t.”

“It looks different from other firebenders’ fire. It feels different too,” Katara explains.

“It’s the Sun Warriors’ style,” Zuko says, and then turns to look at the sky again. “I haven’t seen other waterbenders, so I can’t compare your bending to anybody’s. But I always thought waterbending was calm and tempered and, instead, yours is passionate and fierce.”

\--

Katara can’t find it in herself to hate fire anymore.

As she watches Zuko and Aang practice forms, she realises why she finds his bending so familiar. The forms are so similar to her waterbending forms. His fire moves similar to water.

She remembers the fire from her childhood, before the Fire Nation soldiers turned up at her homeland and destroyed her life. It was a fire that warmed, a fire that lighted the shadows.

Katara lets herself realise that it’s not fire what destroys, but the people who wield it.

As she watches her friends train, her eyes land on Zuko.

Katara finds in herself that she could love fire.

\--

Sozin’s Comet draws near.

Aang disappears and they meet Zuko’s uncle, General Iroh.

Sozin’s Comet arrives.

Katara and Zuko part with their friends to go fight Azula.

They’re halfway on their trip when the wind starts smelling of sulphur and ashes. The air is taut all around them and Katara can feel an alien dryness on her skin. The sky loses its characteristic blue and turns red instead.

They don’t talk much but Katara can feel Zuko is as tense as her.

They arrive at the Fire Nation Capital, where everything is even redder.

Azula and Zuko start fighting, and she stays on the sidelines.

It resembles their combat in the Catacombs but this time the fire is stronger, and bigger. The flames rise and expand like never before.

The fires don’t beat anymore, they thrum. Katara no longer feels its pulse, she hears it, loud and clear.

Azula’s fire is bluer than it has ever been, and Zuko’s is redder too. In fact, his fire is so red that other colours seem to be intertwined in it, just as if they were the natural continuation of crimson. Some strands of whites, blues and even greens are woven in like thread.

Katara is concentrated on the fight but, suddenly, Zuko is running. And before she can even process it, he’s on the floor, injured by Azula’s lightning.

Katara shouts his name, and he doesn’t answer, doesn’t even turn his head toward her.

She feels something she’s felt many times before. It’s in her belly, something that burns her innards. It threatens to spill over and to drown her whole.

But Katara knows there’s something more urgent.

Azula chases her, Katara runs, and thinks.

Sozin’s Comet makes everything dry and taut. Because of that, Katara has felt uncomfortable all day.

But now Katara can sense moisture around her. It’s faint, it’s the humidity a place without rivers nearby usually has, so she nearly doesn’t register it.

But today, sensing so little water means there must be plentiful of it.

Soon Katara finds an underground river, its water flowing right below the Fire Nation Royal Palace. It’s easier after that. With her element around, she’s calmer and more collected, so Katara just has to freeze and chain Azula.

When she’s by Zuko’s side again, Katara is again reminded of that burning sensation in her guts.

It’s anguish, it’s despair and, above all, it’s loss.

Katara has lost so much so many times before. Her mother. Her father. Her childhood. Some of her friends. The stinging pain of loss is creeping up her, and Katara refuses to feel it again.

She takes her water and starts healing Zuko.

And, just for a moment, as she works and he grunts in pain, she lets herself think about everything she’s lost, and about everything she hasn’t mourned, and lets herself believe it’s all the Fire Nation’s fault, that it’s all the fire’s fault.

Katara stops herself. Now she knows the people of the Fire Nation. Now she knows Zuko and his fire.

And although they were almost killed by Azula’s fire, they were saved by Zuko’s.

\--

Sozin’s Comet is long gone and the sky isn’t red, but it’s not blue either. It is pitch black, and a small Moon is out.

Katara finds Zuko leaning on a balcony’s railing and, as usual, he’s looking up, his eyes fixed on the celestial body.

Katara looks at him, opens her mouth, but doubts for a moment.

“Why didn’t you accept your uncle’s offer of being Fire Lord?” She finally asks.

Zuko turns his head and looks at her. He smiles. The light the Sun gives the Moon brushes his face.

“Prince Zuko died three years ago,” he explains. “Now I’m simply a Sun Warrior.”

He looks relaxed, and at peace.

“What are you going to do now then?”

Katara knows it’s sort of an unfair question – she herself doesn’t know what she should do, now that the war is over. Although she has many options, she’s not needed anywhere in particular. There isn’t a clear path in front of her anymore, just life, wide and vast and indeterminate. And choosing a new road for herself is scary.

Zuko doesn’t vacillate, though.

“I’m going to visit the Sun Warriors for a bit – I haven’t seen them in a long time. Then I want to travel around the world.”

Katara leans on the railing next to Zuko, their arms nearly brushing, and looks up at the Moon, just like he’d been doing. She sighs.

“Travelling sounds nice,” she says. She has travelled a lot in the past year, but she reckons she hasn’t really seen a lot of the world. And travelling would mean not having to choose a sole path, but instead being able to go through many at the same time.

Katara is thinking about all this, when she starts sensing fire coming from Zuko beside her. She snaps her head towards him.

There isn’t any fire, but Zuko is still looking at her, his eyes burning in a strange way. And something beats, thrums.

It’s her heart and, maybe, his too.

“Would you like to travel together?” He asks.

Katara’s heart starts beating faster and doesn’t even think about it for a moment before she nods.

“Would I be able to meet the Sun Warriors, though?” She says, and remembers the secrecy there has been around them since Zuko joined their group. However, he nods and, surprised, she adds, “But I’m not a firebender.”

“But you are a waterbender,” he solely says back. Although his words are short, everything else is implicit.

Because just as the Sun and the Moon aid each other, fire and water can help each other too.

Because in his so familiar firebending moves, there are some things she could learn from. And because maybe her waterbending moves could be of use to some firebenders.

All of this Zuko doesn’t say, but Katara understands anyway.

\--

Iroh is crowned Fire Lord.

When they tell their friends of their plans, none seem surprised at all and, not before long, Katara and Zuko leave the Fire Nation Capital.

Travelling on foot is rough, but, at the same time, it forces them to visit every village, meet every person, so Katara likes it.

In their journey, they find fire and water wherever they look, and Katara finds herself falling in love with it.

Because her South Pole is a place made of ice, but fire is everywhere. It kills, it burns, but it also warms, it lights the dark winters, it gets everybody together.

And his Fire Nation is made of dried fire, but water is everywhere too. It hurts, it drowns, but it also cools, it fills their summers, it surrounds and connects all their islands.

The fact is that fire and water have accompanied humanity since the beginning of times, be it in happiness or in suffering.

The Sun Warriors are welcoming, even if they remind Katara of the first time she saw Zuko, all mystery, glowing skin and scent of ash.

And if one year ago somebody had told Katara that she would learn so much waterbending from firebenders, she would have laughed at them.

\--

The first time they kiss the Moon is out, the first trails of winter can be felt in the air, but the fire next to them blazes.

Katara should be used to the glow of his skin, and to the burning of his eyes, and to the way fire always thrums whenever he is near.

Zuko’s lips are warm, all of him is warm, and Katara feels a burning inside her when she touches him.

Katara finds in herself that she loves fire.

**Author's Note:**

> I am on twitter [@motsiparul](https://twitter.com/motsiparul?s=09)!


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